


Skipping Stones

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [76]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, M/M, Road Trips, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a rented Peugot and a vague itinerary and a hand-drawn map, and a sense of desperation. And this is what Danny’s doing on his weekend off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skipping Stones

**Author's Note:**

> for longjackets, who prompted: 12 and danny on a road trip. bonus they have the hots for each other

“I need your help,” the Doctor says. Like it’s one of the hardest things he’s ever had to say, up there with ‘I regret to inform you’ and ‘my condolences’.

Danny could press the issue, dig in. Make him beg. But he’s a bigger man than that, or at least he’d like to be. “Is it Clara?” he asks.

The Doctor nods, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Was it your fault?”

No answer. Not like he expected one.

  


  


It’s a whole big thing, the edges of which Danny only barely grasps. The Doctor is, beneath his standard flimsy protective armor, a complete wreck, garbling on about how the TARDIS is gone, Clara’s in danger, he’s got no one _else_ -

Fucker’s burned so many bridges, and he wants to cross back over them now. But it’s Clara, isn’t it, and Danny will do just about anything for her, up to and including embarking on ill-advised fetch quests with her space dad.

There’s a rented Peugot and a vague itinerary and a hand-drawn map, and a sense of desperation. And this is what Danny’s doing on his weekend off. He wonders, for the dozenth time, what he’d done in a past life to deserve this shit. The car radio blaring out ABBA, sun setting, small towns slipping away behind them.

The Doctor’s a terrible driver. Too fast, no concept of basic safety laws or etiquette. Danny holds on up til the first rest stop then commandeers the driver’s seat, brooking no dissent. The radio switched to a talk show, droning on about cricket match results. And silence between them, for once, the Doctor locked up and small in the passenger seat.

“So. Brighton, then,” Danny says. Unsure why he’s making the gesture.

The Doctor doesn’t respond, just curls up tighter, eyes squeezed shut.

  


  


Whatever it was that was supposed to be in Brighton isn’t there, apparently. Danny stays steady but the panic’s long since set in. The Doctor still can’t find the words to explain what happened to Clara, and Danny’s not an expert in the unspeakable, but he does know you need to define a problem before you have even a hope of solving it.

He parks in the lot of a bed and breakfast, on the outskirts of approximately nowhere, off the A23. Takes careful, measured breaths as the Doctor fumbles at the car door, slams it open and stumbles out. Kicking at the gravel, saying something Danny can’t quite make out.

“It’s okay, it’ll be okay,” the Doctor says. “I have a plan.”

“Yessir. Your orders?” The sarcasm, hopefully, heavy enough for him to catch.  


The Doctor shrugs. “Keep going. Keep trying. Hold your head up.”  


  


  


Marginal sandwiches from the pub down the road. A pint or two, then rushing back in the drizzling rain. One room, one bed. Danny settles in and pretends not to be bothered by the Doctor awake by the kitchenette, single bulb burning, a pile of components that won’t ever turn into anything.

He wakes up to find the Doctor still there, bent-over and red eyed. Gives him a wide berth, dressing and dragging his bags out into the cold morning air.

  


  


Worthing, next, sticking to the coast. The thing that was here turned out to be a rock.

“ _Crystal,_ ” the Doctor corrects.

Danny shrugs.   


  


  


They head back up north. The man on the radio reporting on today’s match. Undifferentiated towns going by. They wind up somewhere west of Horsham, the Doctor ducking out before the car even stops moving. Running across a field, following whatever his cobbled-together device is telling him.

Danny gets out slowly, leans against the hood of the car. Watching the Doctor wander back and forth. It’ll tire him out, at least.

“So tell me again,” Danny yells. “How this isn’t your fault.”

The Doctor stops, crouched and still in the wind whipping around him.

“And then explain how you’re gonna fix it.”

He must’ve heard, but doesn’t acknowledge him. Just tucks the device, somehow, into his coat pocket, and heads back to the car. Deflated, a dejected set to his shoulders, and Danny almost feels bad.

“It’s not here,” the Doctor muttered, sliding back into the passenger seat, trying and failing and trying again to buckle the seatbelt. “Might’ve been, once, but it’s not here now.”

Danny puts the key into the ignition. Doesn’t turn it. “You’re gonna tell me, precisely, what’s going on. Use small words for the dumb human, if you have to, but you’re gonna explain everything. Otherwise I’m leaving you on the side of the road.”

The Doctor fiddles with the rock - the crystal - turning it over and over in his hands. Odd, spidery hands. Danny suddenly remembers that he’s an alien. The tilt of his head, off-kilter breathing.   


“I’ll start at the beginning,” he says. “A very good place to start.”

Danny sighs, and turns the key.

  


  


The missing Infinity Gems, or whatever, are scattered across the countryside. Put them together and a portal opens. Which, they both assume and pretend is fact, will be where Clara is, safe and sound.

Towards Reading, now. Pausing here and there to chase down ghosts, false positives. The Doctor running around muddy fields and breaking into farms. Danny in the car, listening to the results of the test match against India. He doesn’t even like cricket, really.

  


  


Danny pulls in, again, to the gravel lot in front of a bed and breakfast. The Doctor’s got a fondness for these places. Calms him down, seems like. And if he’s easier to deal with, then all of this is easier to deal with, so he’s here, again. Smiling at a woman might as well be the same woman as before, watching her make a carbon copy of his credit card.

One room again, since he’s trying to be frugal and the Doctor appears to understand neither finances nor social conventions. He drops his bags by the door and contemplates just falling into bed fully-dressed, before finding the reserves of his self-control. A weak, lukewarm shower. Slipping half-damp into pajamas that really ought to be washed, by now.

The Doctor, in the same outfit he’s been wearing for the past week. Not nearly as funky as he could be. Just that same odd, earthy, unplaceable smell. Mud on his boots from a few dozen counties. And something nearly sympathetic about him, how small he’s making himself now, perched on the edge of the overstuffed armchair. Not that that excuses all the many times he’s lashed out, all the shit he’s pulled. But.

“Aren’t you tired?”

The Doctor laughs humorlessly. “Exhausted.”

“So sleep.” Danny gestures at the bed. “It’s not that small of a bed. I’ve shared tighter spaces.”

“My concern isn’t potential homoerotic undertones.”

Danny’s turn now to laugh humorlessly. “You’re the one who brought it up, not me.”

But the Doctor’s still talking, either ignoring or just completely missing what Danny had said. “It’s - when I sleep, I dream. And when I dream, I…” Trailing off, an all-too-familiar stare into space.

“Yeah,” Danny says. He pulls the covers back, crawls in. “I know.” He leaves ample room and an open invitation, and then drifts off.

  


  


He wakes up, dawn or just about. A cold, grey morning. The Doctor is where he’d left him. Awake but elsewhere, snapping to as Danny pulls himself together, gathers his bags. The slow, dew-wet country outside. Fields stretching out into the fog. Bags dropped into the boot and the key in the ignition. Engine idling. Danny stares straight ahead, then pushes down on the pedal.

“So. Where next?”

The Doctor unfurls his map, covered in notes and circled town names, arrows, symbols he still hasn’t bothered to explain. Specs on - Danny spares him a glance - they make him look younger, somehow. More human. Not that he is.

“Ah. North, still, I think.”

Danny pulls the car back out onto the highway, past the roundabout. The man on the radio droning on about overs, extras.


End file.
